A-Minor

by Stevie Edwards

No answer, but the body still asks
                         What have you done?
as it hinges toward a new decade of knowing
the bloodhound it carries, fang and fantasy, is
not a pet that can be put down per se
but an abiding beast that prowls in the too quiet.
                         Is it poison? Is it rabid?
Lord knows, I’d give my dainty left ear
to be a painter of pleasant still-lifes,
throw the right one in for free.
                         But who wants any of that?
I do, I do.

Stevie Edwards is a Lecturer in the English Department at Cornell University, where she recently completed her MFA in creative writing. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and Acquisitions Editors at YesYes Books. Her first book, Good Grief, was published by Write Bloody in 2012 and subsequently received the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award and the Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Verse Daily, Indiana Review, Devil’s Lake, Salt Hill, and elsewhere.